Brendan Fehr – Tripping Through Gateways

In this 2012 remake of the original film, Santa has something he was missing in the first film. A freaking flame thrower.

The film opens right away with Santa killing an adulterous couple. He then shows up at the front door of a greedy little snot and kills her. Yeah, we see the killer off a kid in the first ten minutes or so. Jaime King is a deputy in a small town with about one hundred Santas, so you know it is going to be hard to find the one in the creepy mask killing people.

This film is largely about the kills. The original has it’s cult following for some of it’s kills (including using deer antlers-repeated in this film). But here they are far more elaborate, and bloody. Fargo’s wood chipper has nothing on this film. And a flame thrower. Santa has a flame thrower.

Unlike the original, this film opts for a mystery. We are not given the killer’s identity right from the start. We do not know his or her motive. And this is one of the more effective parts of this remake. A lack of discernible intent often makes for an effectively unnerving movie monster.

The cast here is pretty decent. Malcolm McDowell turns in a performance that admittedly is more about it being Malcolm McDowell. King is dependably sympathetic. Donal Logue is pretty entertaining as a lazy Santa who tells kids stuff like their parents might sell their gifts on Ebay and that you cannot trust parents.

One area where the film follows the original is a general undercurrent of sleaze. McDowell’s police chief even wonders just when the town got so sleazy. In place of mean nuns, there is a lascivious pastor. He seems like a creep from the get go when he tells King’s deputy that he will do anything to help her. There is a local porn industry, drug users, adulterers. Sometimes this works in the film…other times it feels like a cheap excuse for nudity

In certain respects, this is a far better film than the original or it’s sequels. But that is what they call damning with faint praise. The positives are about even with the negatives, and that is not enough to make a film worth the time to watch.

Welcome the the Final Destination Franchise, where a bunch of white people and one black guy try and escape the clutches of death. This is both a joke and a fact. There is one (sometimes two-one is almost always a police officer/FBI guy) black guy per movie.

Anyways, the film tells the story of Alex and his classmates who are going on a class trip to France. While sitting on the plane, Alex has a terrifying vision of the plane exploding mid-flight. He starts to notice all sorts of things occurring just as they did in the vision. Panicking, Alex starts to yell that they need to get off the plane. He and a few other students are dragged from the flight. Angered by being removed, tough guy Carter starts a fight with Alex, only to be ended by the plane exploding.

This leads to Alex being a figure of fear and revulsion. His classmates are frightened over what he knows and how he would know it. The night after the funeral, Alex’s friend Todd dies in mysterious circumstances, and Alex starts to see real patterns. The only person to believe him at first is Clear (last name Rivers, 0i). But as more people from the flight die shocking deaths, the others come around and try and find a way to cheat death.

The premise of the film is a pretty clever one, though it seems like they were not fully sure the nature of the situation. Is death sentient? Todd’s death has the most intense lead up of the film, where Todd is clipping nose hairs (which leads you to think he might get impaled) , then plugs in a radio, the whole time water from a toilet leak creeps towards him. After he is dead, the water seeps back to the toilet, as if covering it’s tracks. This is really the only time it seems freakishly supernatural. Otherwise the deaths are elaborate but plausible as chance.

The film features Tony Todd in a brief appearance as a mortician who explains the movies plot fr the characters. One gets the sense that Todd’s character was meant to be a bigger role.

Behind the camera were a few X-Files alum and they try and work their magic here. The death sequences range from shocking to elaborate. Overall, I find a lot to like with this film. While the franchise is more of a guilty pleasure for me, this first film is one I found quite enjoyable.

Tag: Brendan Fehr

Fear of Santa Claus Part 6 (Silent Night, 2012)

In the End Pt One (Final Destination, 2000)